


Oxytocin

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Category: Bleach
Genre: Altered Mental States, Dubcon Cuddling, F/M, M/M, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Multi, Post-Fullbringer Arc, Threesome - F/M/M, VERY work in progress, yep it's the cuddle drugs fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2020-09-25 23:02:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20379571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: Complete trust and physical affection are great!They're a bit less great when they were caused by weird hollow drugs.They're even less great when the guy who was drugged up into loving the hell out of you is the same guy who tried to murder you a couple times a couple years ago.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Get your dose of oxytocin  
Take this hit to show emotion  
Feel it like you've never felt before  
In the dark and in the open  
You're not one who knows devotion
> 
> ["Oxytocin" by Gnash (youtube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p39s-G3KA34)

Something was pawing at her shield. 

"Nooo, mister Croissant, we close at seven..." Orihime mumbled into the fluffy hood of her sleeping bag, and laboriously turned over onto her other side.

More pawing -- like a hand pressed on it, palm open, not very hard. Mm. It was funny how she could kind of feel it. Training was good for figuring out new shields. Like the mirror-exploding one. It was mean but only when people had been mean first. Perfect.

How had she done this one again...? It was good at any rate. Lasting so long, even into sleep. Very good. Good fairies. She would have to pet them later. Make them tiny medals. Oh, but Tsubaki might throw his at her head... Maybe if it was marzipan it wouldn't hurt...

Light scratching now. Oh no, she'd forgotten to let her cat in... Wait, she didn't have a cat. "S' the wrong house, kitty," she muttered, eyes closed tight. Despite all her efforts she was starting to wake up and the air was nippy outside of her bag.

"Lemme in," a man asked, weary and muffled. Who...?

Oh well, she knew the voice. Probably a friend? Yawning, she folded herself in two on her side, wriggled over Sado-kun's hip, poked the shield. Then she rolled back into her gap. The sand under her sleeping bag was still a bit warm from her own body.

Something shuffled through. Already dozing off, she remembered at the last minute to close the shield again. She moved a bit closer to Ishida-kun to make space and then let herself sink back into her dreams.

Training camps were so nice. So much snuggling. Next time they needed to bring Tatsuki-chan. And invite Kuchiki-san and Abarai-kun. Make a proper pile...

... Put Kurosaki-kun in the middle for everybody to pile up on, it wasn't fair that he'd put himself on the edge of the group today to be able to shield them and could only snuggle on one side. It was such a relief to have him entirely back with them and he totally deserved to be squished. With love. And nuzzling. And... Oh, too daring, no, no, not her. Maybe Ishida-kun would agree to be her nuzzle proxy. Or maybe...

A nose pushed through her hair, breathed out against her nape, warm and tingly. Sighing, she let herself sleep.

\--

In the morning, or whatever passed for morning in the perpetual moonlit darkness of Hueco Mundo, there was an arm wrapped tight around her ribs, a hand tucked under her side from the front.

It was also half-buried in her underboobs. And it wasn't dark-skinned enough to be Sado-kun's.

A shock went down her spine, waking her up in full. She couldn't feel enough reiatsu from the man behind her to identify him, even touching like this.

It definitely was a man, though.

It wasn't Sado-kun. Ishida-kun was in _front _of her, cracking his eyes open with a faint frown, as if he had felt her sudden unease.

"Ishida-kun?" she whispered, and tried not to let her voice shake. The man at her back spooned her so close that without the sleeping bag she could probably have felt the seams of his clothes and every bone he had that wasn't completely buried under muscles. Her _bum was on his lap_.

"Inoue-s--"

Ishida-kun sat up all at once, eyes wild and hair flying. Orihime couldn't move. She smiled, tried to breathe. "It... isn't Kurosaki-kun... is it?"

Ishida-kun's eyes were terrifying. 

"Don't move, Inoue-san," he whispered back, lifting his hand with the cross on it.

Then behind him Kurosaki-kun woke up with a groan and turned to face all of them, and immediately went "What the fuck?!" loud enough to make the arm around her ribs tighten up. Orihime squeaked.

Suddenly she was surrounded by three very awake, battle-ready friends -- and still spooned by a dozing stranger.

"Sado-kun," Ishida-kun said coolly, a bow starting to take shape. "Move back a bit."

Kurosaki-kun's hand closed on his wrist and he pushed on hand and knees to loom over Orihime, then hovered, his eyes fixed with horror on the wrist she could tell disappeared under her left breast. Her face caught on fire.

"Kurosaki, just _let _me--"

"Don't explode people on top of her, dumbass -- oh my god. No, wait, Chad, he's got a grip like a vice, he'll break her ribs!"

"You know this -- this _hollow_?" Ishida-kun asked, spearing Kurosaki-kun with a quick glare.

A hollow. Of course it would be a hollow, in here. There had only ever been three shinigami, and they... Orihime would never have come back had they still been around.

An arrancar. The body against hers felt much too humanoid to be anything else. But she still couldn't feel his reiatsu.

It wasn't Ulquiorra. The arm was too thick, the skin not ashen enough. She breathed out, eyes closed. It wasn't Ulquiorra.

When she craned her neck, slow so she wouldn't dislodge him, she saw nothing of his face -- but the edge of a line of jagged carnivore teeth, a flash of blue hair. Her heart kicked hard in her chest.

"It's Grimmjow," Kurosaki-kun said quietly, voice rough and something strange in his eyes. "Sexta Espada. Never knew if he made it out or not."

"And _now _he's made it _in--_"

Orihime's voice shook with nerves and embarrassment, not knowing if she should be mortified or terrified, but she made herself speak up anyway. "It's not Kurosaki-kun's fault, Ishida-kun, I think -- I think I opened the shield?"

"You _what_?" Kurosaki-kun spluttered. "When was--" A brief, stricken pause. "Shit, oh, _shit_, we were supposed to take turns on _watch _and then we just -- what the fuck?!"

And then they'd just... What had they done yesterday evening? Laughed... Joked... Made a bonfire? With like, three candles and a huge, log-sized camping book Urahara-san had stuffed into Kurosaki-kun's backpack, because Hueco Mundo's trees were made of crystal and not wood. Then just kind of. Leaned on each other. Said nice things? She vaguely remembered Sado-kun petting the top of her head with great care. It was a miracle she'd thought to put up the shield, but probably that was only because Kurosaki-kun had said good things about her shields in general a minute before that...

"More urgent question," Sado-kun said, interrupting everyone. 

"...Yeah?"

"Why is he not waking up. At all."

Everybody exchanged looks over her. Orihime worked on deepening her breathing, trying to calm herself down. "He uh. Twitched? When Kurosaki-kun raised his voice."

Kurosaki-kun frowned, shuffling closer to peer over her. "Okay, so he's not in a _coma_. Grimmjow? Grimmjow, you creepy bastard." 

"Nothing," Sado-kun observed with a thoughtful frown, also leaning over to look at the Espada's face. 

"Let's just..." Kurosaki-kun looked down at the arm around her, made a weird face. Orihime flushed some more. It _was _in an unfortunate place, wasn't it. "I'll. Okay. Let's get ready to pry him off." 

"This is _ridiculous_," Ishida-kun muttered, but moved down toward her feet as Sado-kun hovered his arms by her side to wrench them apart at a second's notice. 

One hand moved a hair's breadth off Grimmjow's elbow, ready to yank if he clamped down on Orihime. Kurosaki-kun breathed out, then rested the other one on his shoulder like he was expecting an explosion. 

"Mnhhh."

Grimmjow pushed his face into the back of her neck; the edge of his mask caught lightly on her hair. Orihime shivered at his hot exhale, feeling him shift minutely and relax all over again.

"... That fucking bastard. I've got half a mind to give him a Kurosaki Special wake-up call." Kurosaki-kun gave the man's shoulder a light shake, then a harder one. Craning her neck, as much to see as to get her skin away from his _breathing_, Orihime watched his head roll almost limp on the sand.

"Okay then." Kurosaki-kun cracked her an encouraging smile, eyes crinkled kindly. "Operation unwrap the octopus." 

He lifted Grimmjow's elbow, slowly pulled it up. Orihime flushed anew, feeling that hand slide across her ribs, the knuckle of his thumb nudging against her breasts. 

She'd had his hand at her throat twice -- once in her collar, lifting her off the ground like she weighed less than nothing; once all the way around, fingers digging into her skin. He hadn't squeezed hard enough to really hurt, to choke her for real, just enough to make sure she knew how easily he could. Then Kurosaki-kun had stopped him. She was sure he would have tightened his grip had she kept defying him. He'd been so _brutal _with Loly and Menoly. 

Kurosaki-kun guided his arm up, handed it over to Sado-kun so he could tilt Grimmjow back, then moving toward her head he caught Orihime under the armpits. He had whisked her free in a second, sliding her right out of her sleeping bag and dragging her onto the sand until she was at the other end of the shielded area. Orihime gasped in surprise, suddenly sitting several feet away.

Grimmjow looked the same. A black t-shirt instead of an open white jacket on bare skin, but that was it. The mask was the same, the angle of his eyebrows, the green tracks under his eyes, the tendons on his hands. Everything.

She'd never seen him so still, so lax, so _empty _of even potential movement.

Sado-kun rolled him onto his back in full and nothing happened.

"We need to keep watch on the outside," Ishida-kun said abruptly, breaking the odd silence. "There's no way he just got falling-down drunk on arrancar moonshine."

Sado-kun nodded, turned to face the gap in the rocks that led out of the canyons and into the desert. Orihime should probably... she didn't know, look at the barrier, maybe. She started turning around--

Ack! Kurosaki-kun was still seated on his haunches behind her, his knees on both sides of her waist. She knocked her head into him and he wobbled, almost fell on his butt; he caught himself on her shoulder -- and then immediately let go, eyes wide, and promptly _did _fall on his butt. 

"Sorry!" they both said at the same time. Orihime flailed her hands. "I forgot you were there, Kurosaki-kun!"

"No, I'm sorry," Kurosaki-kun said, rubbing at the back of his head. "You probably don't want more guys in your space right now, I should have cleared out straight away. I'll, uh. Help Ishida. Yeah."

"...Okay." Still flustered, Orihime turned to the barrier as well. 

It really did feel strange, the more she thought about it. Had she really held it all night? She wasn't even that tired. 

Her back still felt hot with the memory of Grimmjow's body heat, the back of her thighs and knees. Her ribs. Her... 

In contrast she'd barely had time to notice Kurosaki-kun's knees, brushing her sides as lightly as they had been. It left her just as flustered. She'd been between his _legs_.

It tingled and was confusing, her body alive with things she had no name or experience for. Things she didn't want to have a name for, because they weren't... They weren't right, were they?

If it had been Kurosaki-kun holding her like that... 

Well, alright, she may have died on the spot. 

But she would have died having named the cause of her death. Orihime poked obediently at her shield and tried to push the words 'lust', 'desire' and their like from her brain. They might be getting attacked any minute now; it really wasn't the time for it. 

It was just a reflex. A blind reaction. Her body confusing adrenaline and the helplessness of being touched intimately with other things. She was just ... hormonally seventeen, she thought, unbidden, and the idea of Tatsuki-chan consoling her with those words made her laugh out loud all at once.

"Um, nothing," she had to say when everybody looked her way. "Tsubaki-kun is sleeping funny."

\--

Okay, Ichigo told himself, crab-walking in a wide half-circle around Inoue. Enough flutter-braining. Asshole Espada dropping by for a visit in the middle of Hueco Mundo wasn't the time for it. Just because they'd beaten Aizen didn't mean the remnants of his army were disregardable. 

Grimmjow in particular was the crazy kind of asshole that probably didn't recognize 'I beat you before and I've only gotten better since' as a signal to back off. But what was worse was...

He didn't _run _from a fight, but he had obviously run from this one. Because someone had gotten the drop on him. Ichigo had... a little trouble imagining that one. 

Only not very much. Because all things considered...

"So did anyone else have a weird evening yesterday or just me?" he asked cautiously, and wasn't surprised when everyone else made affirmative noises. "...Symptoms?"

"Dissociative," Ishida said after a long pause. 

Inoue made a sad agreeing noise. "A little bit that. Kind of floaty?"

"Peaceful?" Chad went with. "And I think... I petted everyone."

Ishida spluttered, like he didn't remember it. Ichigo groaned, because he couldn't tell himself that and actually convince himself. His hair probably still spiked toward the direction Chad had fondled it. 

"Yeah, bud, you really did. You and your dinner plate hands."

"You looked very cute," Chad said, even more deadpan than usual. Ichigo grabbed a handful of sand and threw it at his back. 

"Proof that none of us were in our right minds, right there," Ishida said all dry and mock-offended, and Inoue giggled.

"Oh, but all of you are cute without any drugs already!" 

"Um. Thanks, Inoue. I guess." There was no one but Ishida in punching range if their guest woke up now, and Ishida in all his toothpick glory could still handle himself, so Ichigo picked up Grimmjow's wrist, waved his hand in the air. It flopped around limply and dropped like a stone when he let go. "So basically yesterday was like we got the backwash of a triple dose of roofies, and a couple hours later comes this blitzed asshole. I think we can conclude that there's some kind of link between the two."

"A good thing though," Ishida said. "It obviously wasn't intended for us. Or we'd be dead."

"... That's a point alright." 

Ishida gave him a somber look, then went back to scowling at the arrancar. "Let's see if we can't wake him up. We need more intel. Inoue-san, how is your shield?"

"... I... My fairies are asleep. But, um. Still in position somehow."

Ichigo gave a slow blink. "Your... _fairies... _are asleep." Yeah, she'd said Tsubaki -- all of them? What the shit. Did they even -- they were manifestations of her power, how... What the hell. Okay. Whatever. "Okay, then see if--"

"_Don't _wake them up now," Ishida cut him off. "We don't know if the gas or whatever it was isn't still outside. The Espada first."

Ugh. Why did he have to make sense? Ichigo gave in. "Okay, okay. Espada first, cuddle gas second."

He picked up the guy's wrist again, started slapping the back of his hand like he'd seen his dad do a hundred times before, mostly to dehydrated little ladies. It wasn't exactly high summer out here -- actually, it was pretty cool out of a sleeping bag. Ichigo was enjoying his long sleeves.

No reaction for several long seconds, and then Grimmjow groaned quietly; his eyes cracked open. Ichigo tensed.

Glassy, unfocused for too long before they found Ishida's face and a puzzled frown formed between his brows. 

Then he tensed up -- kind of. Eyes still hazy, looking oddly bewildered. Instead of a snarly, crazy asshole full of fangs and murderglee he looked like a nice young man with accidental punk hair and a halloween decoration on his face. Almost apprehensive. Holy shit but that was disturbing; Ichigo barely recognized him. 

Still squinting at Ishida, he pawed at his own waist; Ichigo tensed, and then winced -- no sword there. No sword anywhere in sight, actually. Well, hell.

Reluctant as they were to look away from Ishida, Grimmjow's eyes finally flicked to him. The change was instant; a startled blink and then the furrow between his brows melted right off, the pinch of his mouth relaxed, lips parted.

He mumbled something that wasn't even all of Ichigo's name, the only intelligible part the 'saki' at the end; his eyes fluttered closed. Ichigo slapped the back of his hand again. "Hey. No falling back asleep."

"Mnh." Another hazy glance toward Chad, Ishida. "... Your... fracción?" he asked slowly, like the word itself was unfamiliar, or like he wasn't sure that was it.

"No, they're my--" Ichigo hesitated. Did hollows even have friends. "You know what, let's go with that."

"Mmh. 'kay." And he went and closed his eyes again. Ichigo groaned. What the fuck, seriously, last he'd seen the guy had been at the tail end of a brutal fight where he... got himself surprise-backstabbed by a supposed ally and Ichigo had to intervene... Huh. Would that be enough to change his mind? It seemed to Ichigo that he should be angrier about it, at the very least. In denial or something. Embarrassed.

It'd been two years, though, so... self-reflection? Grimmjow had taken up meditation and was now a surprisingly chill and thoughtful person? Who even knew. Maybe it was aliens.

"Hey, wake up. Grimmjow, I need you to wake up."

"Mmnh." The arrancar turned ponderously onto his side and burrowed into Inoue's abandoned sleeping bag. He rubbed his cheek against it, eyes closed, visibly _breathing in Inoue's scent_ \--

That _fucking pervert_. 

"_Getsuga_\--"

"Ichigo!" "Kurosaki-kun!" "Hey, you idiot--!"

Standing up in a wide, ready stance, sword held in a double grip and absolutely _no _gathering reiatsu, Ichigo stared at his friends in turn. "... I was _trying to scare him awake_."

It had worked, he realized looking down at the body between his feet. Eyes hazy but open, head rolled back to stare up at him.

Not really in fear, though, more like dumb amazement. "... Huh. ... Who's the idiot... pissed you off?"

... Ugh. Ichigo planted Zangetsu in the sand, glared down. "You did, asshole. You're the idiot." He crouched down, one hand on his sword's spine for balance, hovering in a way he hoped was at least a little unnerving. "What happened, Grimmjow? Stay awake." 

Blue eyes went fluttering closed once again. Oh, no. Nope. Not happening. He grabbed a shoulder, turned Grimmjow onto his back, then pulled him by the elbows into a sitting position. Grimmjow groaned, head lolling as he tried to catch himself. 

"It's obvious he's too impaired to know what to do with a question that vague," Ishida pointed out. "Keep it simple."

"Why am the one asking questions," Ichigo muttered as he shifted his grip to the man's upper arms. Asshole was heavier than he looked like. Too many muscles, all of them uncooperative and unhelpful. "Grimmjow, before you came here... Uh. Did someone do something to you?" 

Grimmjow made a 'uh' noise and binked slowly. Fuck, was even _that _too complex?

"Did you meet someone new?" Inoue asked, peering with great caution over Ichigo's shoulder. He could see her trying on a smile, though it shook at the edges a bit.

Slow blink, pensive, heavy-lidded look. "Mm... Yeah."

"Were they nice to you?"

The little smile on that sharp-edged face had Ichigo blink dumbly for too many seconds. Eyes crinkling at the corners -- almost... almost _sweet_, god it was so _wrong_, who was this pod person? That kind of expression belonged to a ballad-singing teenage heartthrob, not -- not to the _Espada of Destruction_.

"Mm-hm. 'S my friend."

"They said they were your _friend_?" Ichigo repeated in bafflement. Oh, so he _did _know what that was. 

And he used it for...?

"Mm-hm."

"You agreed?"

"Yeah." Grimmjow cracked a yawn, curled forward as if to slump into Ichigo; his forehead brushed against Ichigo's shoulder. Fuck. Close -- "Was nice..."

Ichigo scowled. "The -- your friend was nice? Like how? Did..."

"Did they... pet you?" Inoue said cautiously, a hand playing nervously with her hair -- or maybe more like she was recreating a tactile memory of Chad doing the same--

The noise that came out of Grimmjow's throat had Ichigo flushing hot before he could even fully decipher it. Low and lazy, contented, oh-so-slightly rolling -- a sighing moan, a _purr_.

Three inches from his ear. 

"Hey," he spluttered. "Hey, what the hell kind of noise--"

He'd only been keeping Grimmjow balanced for a while now, not really taking his weight -- so when the arrancar pushed forward to slump against his chest he wasn't in time to stop him. Ichigo almost went down onto his ass astride Grimmjow's knees; Inoue and Ishida grabbed hurriedly for him, pressing their hands against his back to keep him up.

Grimmjow was still fucking _purring_, a shivering noise of pure contentment with just a hint of a throaty rasp, only now he was doing it against Ichigo's collarbone. Ichigo flushed hotter.

"Felt _so _nice," the man breathed out, and it was just. It was. It was _pornographic_.

From the deer-in-headlights look on Ishida's face and the high blush on Inoue's cheeks he wasn't the only one who thought so. Even Chad cleared his throat and pointedly looked away. Oh god. Ichigo was going to spontaneously combust or something.

"So why did you not... stay with them?" Inoue asked somehow, eyes averted pretty obviously and still just as scarlet as he was. "If they were nice."

Grimmjow made a grumbling noise; his brows furrowed faintly. He tilted his head back to look at Ichigo, then blinked hazily at her. "They said, uh..."

His hands were lax on Ichigo's thighs, palms up and fingers loosely curled.

"Somethin' about..." A barely-there frown, more puzzled than annoyed, but a little annoyed even so. "Declawed kitty."

The flash of light a bare whisper away from Ichigo's belly had him jerking back by instinct, throwing himself into a fighting stance as he swept Inoue behind him--

\--the baby version of a Desgarrón had gone out already, the reishi claws sparking back to nothing, not having lasted even a whole second. Grimmjow toppled onto his side slow like a great tree, unconscious before he landed across the sleeping bag.

"Note to self," Ishida said after a couple seconds of communal silent staring. "No kitty jokes."

Inoue laughed, hands guiltily pressed to her mouth to muffle the sound. Chad huffed his amusement. Ichigo just groaned, and went about rolling their surprise guest into a slightly more comfortable position.

"I kind of hope he actually did gut them," he couldn't help but mutter as he arranged the Espada onto his back and dropped Inoue's sleeping bag across his chest and stomach. Ishida arched his eyebrows pointedly.

"I can't say I hope for anyone getting hurt," Inoue said quietly. "But he... They called themselves his friend, and. And touched him. When he was all... When he wasn't--" She swallowed, mouth pinched white. "When he couldn't."

Ichigo nodded, his jaw clenched. He just -- that kind of smarmy, invasive asshole was just. He hated those. Lording their power over the victims at their mercy by getting into their space and being all cloying-fake and putting their _hands _on them in some parody of affection. It was gross. 

"If he hadn't gutted them a _little_," Chad pointed out, "they'd have caught him again."

"But he may not have gutted them lethally enough for our peace of mind," Ishida retorted. "So long as we can't test the outside for ... I don't know what caused this, reiatsu? Gas? It's not prudent to come out."

"We can't stay here all week either, though," Ichigo countered, and they all fell back into tense bickering as they moved back into positions that allowed them to watch the outside of the shield for movement. But the cliffs around them were still and nothing came from the mouth of canyon and the desert beyond.

They ate breakfast still taking turns to look around and then waited some more, suggesting and discarding tactics. The Sexta Espada kept sleeping in the middle of them, dead to the world and reiryoku so low he had no presence to speak of. This time Ichigo didn't try to wake him up. 

\--

He was cold.

His ... hands, and feet. Cold. Neck. Stomach was okay. Stomach was soft-fluffy-light-warm. It was... 

He _could _fix that, he realized slowly. If he _moved _to get the cold parts under the... warm. Thing. Yeah. Sounded good.

Any minute now. 

... He really was too cold. He shifted onto his side (so heavy) and brought his arms closer, his knees. 

The warm thing shifted wrong. His back was cold now. No. Very displeasing. His thigh. Shoulder. Not good at _all_.

Something touched his shoulder and was warm. Oh, hey. Yeah. Hand. The rest of the person was gonna be warm too, he figured out, and briefly felt quite impressed by his moment of brilliance. He turned around, his own hand feeling across the cold sand.

There. With a heave and an awkward wriggle he was slumping back down against -- between -- living warmth, solid flesh. His friend...? 

(No, he thought vaguely. Not that one. Couldn't be, because... Because.)

"_\--the shit Grimmjow you're headbutting my **crotch**_\--"

He gave the thigh his cheek was pillowed on a half-hearted slap, then burrowed deeper. Somewhere a bit farther someone was laughing, high-pitched and kind of breathless. He... Hm. 

Several people.

... Surrounded...? 

He cracked an eye open (his eyelid weighed tons) and rolled it upwards. Orange and black.

"Oh. Kurosaki. Hey."

"I'm gonna murder you," Kurosaki said, his other leg raised, knee pressing against Grimmjow's cold back to keep him from flopping backwards. Grimmjow smiled. "Do you think I'm kidding or something? _Murder _you. Hey -- hey, don't fall back asleep. I'll chuck you right off. No. Grimmjow, _no_... Oh, fucking hell, never mind, he's gone again. Help me, guys, time to burrito him up. Maybe if he's wrapped up tight enough it'll stop him getting cuddly with everything that moves."

Their hands were warm and felt good on him and he sighed his appreciation for them, body loose, pliant. They put warm, fluffy cloth on him (there was sand in it some but he was used to sand anyways) and tugged and shifted him and (it was so many hands but) (Kurosaki holding his wrist, keeping him from falling) (the woman's soft nervous mouth as she gave back his arm...)

Warm and squeezed in. Very good. 

He dozed for a few minutes after they'd stopped touching him, and then rolled onto his side and went to press himself against the nearest hip.

"_\--gonna stake him out for the goddamned scavengers--_"

"--sokay, Kurosaki-kun." A small hand landed light as a butterfly on his hair; he sighed, nuzzled a little closer, and again until the hand started patting his temple carefully. "It's okay."

It was indeed pretty okay.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am not progressing fast at ALL on chapter 4 and may need to delete and figure out something else. but. i still like this one, so here it is.

"Oh, what nice souvenirs you always bring me, Kurosaki-san."

Ichigo rolled his eyes as Urahara leaned over the arrancar sleeping soundly on the big steel-sheeted table in the center of the room. The lab was a bit devoid of comfortable napping spots but Grimmjow didn't seem to care that he was now on a metal surface and not on sand or Chad's back.

The place did give off a very mad scientist vibe. All harsh lights and deep shadows, strange gleams, piles of yellowed old papers with mysterious scribbles and things bubbling in vials, seals drawn on every single flat surface... All things considered it was a surprise that the table didn't have leather straps and a gutter for draining blood away, and maybe some kind of circular saw hanging menacingly overhead.

"You can't keep this one," he replied sternly, arms crossed. "Just figure out how to fix him so he can wander back home already, I don't know how long his reiryoku is going to stay so low."

"But a surprise visit by three extermination squadrons would be so much fun," Urahara mused back as he took Grimmjow's pulse, two fingers on the man's limp wrist.

"Are you kidding me? It's my fault he's in the human world in the first place, I'd have to protect him."

Urahara looked up, blinked mildly. "Kurosaki-san, will you lie to my face and pretend that _doesn't _sound like fun?"

He started fussing around with weird machines Ichigo couldn't figure out, nothing like Ichigo's dad's medical equipment and yet too much like it.

Ichigo frowned a little deeper, uncomfortable. It wasn't like he thought Urahara was going to actively hurt the guy, he just... He didn't entirely put it past him to slip in some kind of future 'Just In Case' insurance with the examination. Like a GPS tracker or some kind of sleeping drug dispenser.

"...It would _really _depend on which captains show up," he said eventually. "Actually it would be better without any captain, they could just send Ikkaku and his posse... But for an Espada-level threat that's really not happening."

"Indeed." Urahara ran some kind of weird wand from Grimmjow's head to his still-sleeping-bagged feet. "Hm. That's a really thorough drain. He hasn't gotten any better at all?"

"Um." Ichigo scratched at his chin. "Dunno. I'm not the best sensor." He stepped back toward the door, leaned out. The dark corridor stretched out toward the main rooms of the house and their warm light. "Guys?" he called, and it wasn't two seconds before Inoue's head popped out.

"Yes?" she asked, on hands and knees from crawling away from the low table Ururu was serving them tea at. She must be Olympics material at doggy-walking. Ichigo couldn't help smiling a little, amused.

"Urahara wants to know if Grimmjow's reiryoku has been building back up at all?"

Inoue stood, batted imaginary dust off her jogging pants, and trotted down to the lab door. Ichigo stepped aside to let her in.

She looked a bit nervous to be there, but not too bad. She approached the table easily enough, looking down at the blue-haired bastard who'd probably traumatized her nice and proper two years back. (It likely paled besides Aizen-trauma and Ulquiorra-trauma, but Ichigo knew Grimmjow's brand of hospitality well enough. Never mind how Ichigo himself had witnessed him grabbing her by the throat, there was no way she hadn't seen him put his hands through people or something.)

"I think... It went down when he tried to use that claws attack--"

"Claws attack?" Urahara mused, eyes flashing under the hat. Ichigo shook his head.

"It was a demonstration of what he did to the sleeping drug guy. Idiot joked about him being declawed." He rolled his eyes. "But honestly I've taken that attack before and it was like... Like a cheap toy car and a tank. I don't think it would have done more than scratch me. Anyway, Inoue, you were saying?"

"Yes -- it went down at that point -- it was already very weak -- and then he passed out, and since then I don't know if it has quite gone back to the level before that."

She actually looked worried -- and knowing her, not even because of what an Espada could do to her; she was worried _for the Espada_. Heh. Ichigo smiled at nothing in particular, ducking his head a little so it wouldn't show.

"He's very weak right now, isn't he?"

"Your friend Asano-san could punch him unconscious without too much effort," Urahara replied casually. Ichigo made a face.

"Let's never make that comparison in his hearing again or Keigo's gonna get his ass murdered."

"I shall endeavor not to bring it back up," Urahara said, a smirk in his voice if not on his face. Ichigo vaguely thought about kicking him.

"It's not normal for it to build back up so slowly, is it?" Inoue asked, eyebrows pinched in worry.

Urahara hummed, turning Grimmjow's hand over in his and pressing on his nails to watch the color rush back in. "Indeed not. At least his blood circulation seems fine, and there's no sign of internal injuries, but his rate of healing is going to be abysmal right now..."

He turned away to get busy in one of a hundred drawers; Ichigo stepped up to the table by Inoue's side to look down at their guest.

"How you doin'?" he asked quietly. She blinked up at him.

"Oh, I -- I'm fine, Kurosaki-kun. I'm fine. He's not scary right now, it's just awkward. He's going to feel really embarrassed later, won't he?" she added with a wince. Ichigo grimaced at the thought.

"Ugh. Better hope he doesn't remember."

"There's a better than even chance of that," Urahara replied as he turned around, a syringe and other paraphernalia in hand. "From what you tell me he's been showing ample amounts of confusion and altered behavior already, and with a drain that deep there might be enough brain fog to make him lose that period of time entirely even if amnesia _isn't _an intended side effect."

He finished cleaning up the crook of Grimmjow's elbow, wrapped a strap around his upper arm.

"Of course it's also possible he will remember everything in full clarity and get rid of every single person who witnessed his snuggly shame. Hold his shoulders down, Kurosaki-san, will you?"

Sighing heavily, Ichigo moved to the head of the table and pressed both hands down on the arrancar's shoulders. No reaction. Better than the guy getting all nuzzly, he supposed. It was bad enough they'd had to explain the symptoms, he would never hear the end of it if Urahara saw any of that with his own eyes. It had been very... Very.

Weird. Yeah. The Sexta Espada, a shameless cuddler. Ichigo tried to remember all the times he'd gravitated to... just about everyone, really, Ishida was just much better at dodging. Only it bothered Ichigo less to watch him butt his stupid baby-blue head against Chad's hip than against _Inoue's_. Chad's hip wasn't attached to... to. Well. Chad didn't have a butt. A _lady _butt, at least, he didn't have that. He did have, uh, _some _butt, and _what the shit was Ichigo even thinking about_.

Anyway he didn't like it when Grimmjow went and wrapped himself shamelessly around Inoue. Because. Well.

It just seemed way worse when it was on a girl. Especially on a girl who was too nice to slap a guy silly and then stab him a couple times to make sure the message about wandering hands was understood. Ichigo would have felt entirely fine watching Grimmjow drape himself across Matsumoto's lap. Or Rukia's, even though she was tiny and the asshole would dwarf her. Rukia was really stabby.

Anyway Chad was good at redirecting Grimmjow's absently kneading hands and his stupid nuzzling maw before they could get anywhere personal. Ichigo was... not as good; he never seemed to see it coming in time. But Inoue, oh god.

All things considered, Ichigo _was _glad Grimmjow's blindly traveling hand had passed across his ass and not Inoue's, but he was also _supremely_ glad Ishida hadn't seen it in between all that prancing around the perimeter out of cuddle reach. Because swear to god Ichigo would have thrown a hundred and sixty pounds of arrancar at him, and he would have _laughed_.

"Did you try to reject his condition?" Urahara asked as he felt for the vein. Right. Yes. The blood taking. Ichigo cleared his throat and tried to get his head back in the game.

"Uh huh. But there was no wound and I couldn't feel any foreign reiatsu. I know there must be something else but if I don't understand what I'm supposed to be rejecting..." Inoue bit her lip. "I didn't want to push it."

"Yes, that's smarter in those -- _whoa _there."

At the first prickle, Grimmjow had reared up; his forehead missed Ichigo's face by less than an inch. Ichigo slammed him back down on reflex. "Hey! Calm down, it's just--"

Grimmjow didn't _truly _freak out until he tried to kick and got tangled in the sleeping bag, only unzipped to mid-thigh. Twisting and snarling, eyes wide, he flung himself halfway off the table. Ichigo was still holding onto his shoulders but the rest of him had flipped onto his side and over the edge and his hands scrambled madly for a grip. He was gonna hurt himself. Ichigo let him go, just as he managed to plant a foot on the edge of the table _oh fuck _\--

Inoue caught the full impact of an adult male in energetic motion in the ribs and went down with barely a squeak.

"Inoue! Shit, sorry!"

Ichigo dropped down to haul the arrancar off her -- and Grimmjow proceeded to attempt to climb right over him, or maybe through, it wasn't clear. Ichigo snapped his arms closed around the struggling man, teeth gritted -- was startled when it wasn't so hard to contain him at all. Sitting ass-bruisingly hard on the floor, Ichigo pushed himself and his armful away from Inoue along the polished floor, freeing her from blindly kicking, way-too-long legs.

Pressing his back against the far wall, he shifted his hold to catch Grimmjow's elbows, craned his head to look past him. "Are you okay?!"

"Diaphragm," Inoue wheezed out, folded in two, face flushed. Ichigo winced. God, that stupid asshole of a hollow--

\--Shaking.

Oh. Hell.

"Let -- no. No." Grimmjow's eyes were still hazy with bewilderment but too wide now, showing whites all around, and he... He really was trembling, like he was cold, or. Did he _get _scared? Ever? Fuck. Ichigo swallowed nervously. What now?

"Hey, it's okay. It's okay, Grimmjow. Um. Do you recognize me?"

Galloping noises in the corridor -- Chad and Ishida appeared in the doorway, with Ururu bending down and peering around their legs. Urahara had gone around the table and was leaning over Inoue. She didn't... She didn't seem hurt, just winded. Ichigo relaxed a little.

He felt another shudder run down Grimmjow's body as Ishida demanded to know what the fuck, watched him throw a wild-eyed side-look at Chad's hulking shape when he leaned in to peer at Ichigo, make sure he was okay.

Ichigo lifted his hand palm out to ward them off. "We're cool." He tugged Grimmjow toward his other side; was surprised and a bit glad when Grimmjow went with it, awkwardly moved along. He ended up sitting against the wall against Ichigo's flank, fingers of both hands digging white-knuckled into Ichigo's forearm.

Ichigo wasn't even gonna have bruises from it.

He pressed his forearm across Grimmjow's chest, keeping him pinned, or maybe shielded, somewhere in between. The man still breathed too hard, but he lifted his head to look at Ichigo and he already looked more baffled than anything else.

"... Hey, jerk. You know who I am?"

"Mm. Yeah." His eyes unfocused; Ichigo held on a bit tighter when he predictably started folding in two, halfway passed out. "Dizzy," he groaned. "Fuck."

Ichigo snorted quietly. "Yeah, I noticed."

Inoue was standing up, still a little flushed, helped by Ishida. Ichigo scanned her from top to bottom, looking for a scratch, anything out of place.

"I'll have a bruise on my bum, I think," she blurted out, and then flushed a little. "I mean. Um."

Ichigo cleared his throat. "Um. Yeah. My bad. I should have pinned him better."

"Unless you planned to climb on top of him I don't know how you would have solved it," Urahara said absently. Ichigo flushed, able to envision it in way too much detail after all that personal space invasion he'd already been subjected to. "On reflection we should have asked Tessai or Sado-san to hold his legs down as well."

"And then he'd have freaked out twice as bad! Really smart."

"Yeeess," Urahara replied slowly, "but now it would be done, and instead we have to try again."

Ugh. Sighing heavily, Ichigo turned his head to check on the arrancar slumped against his side. One of his legs was still thrown across Ichigo's knee and his head listed sideways, hollow mask nudging against Ichigo's shoulder. But he still breathed too fast.

"Uh. Let me just see if we can... talk it out first, yeah?" Ichigo drew in a deep breath. "Okay. Grimmjow? Hey, Grimmjow."

The arrancar didn't respond, eyes fixed on Urahara, flicking between his face and his conspicuously empty hands.

"Excellent conversationalist as always."

"Shut up, Ishida." Ichigo bounced his shoulder under his cheek a little. "Hey, Grimmjow. Mister badass Espada. You wanna look at me?"

"I know what you look like," he growled back quietly, still halfway slumped on Ichigo's shoulder and his fingers kneading and releasing at the muscles in Ichigo's forearm like he thought maybe _this _time the claws would pop out. It was the first sign of hostility he'd shown since this morning and it was utterly half-hearted.

"Listen, we need a blood sample. Just one. You okay with getting pricked once?"

... Aaaand that was panicky breathing again. Well, fuck.

Fuck. Ichigo really wasn't good with... Reassurances. Nicer things. At the same time it disturbed him that such a proud man would be affected like that, made his stomach and guts tie into knots of sympathetic shame.

"Do you trust me," he asked his old enemy like an idiot. "Do you -- Grimmjow, even a little bit, _do you trust me_?"

A conflicted frown passed on Grimmjow's face. "...Mrgh. Do you... why."

"We gotta take a look to understand what happened to you. It'll help you in the end."

Grimmjow stared at him as if trying to read his mind, then looked past him -- met Inoue's eyes. He hesitated, brows knit. "Can't you... Fix. You fix things." He touched his own left forearm, kneaded at it. "You fixed me."

Inoue winced; she stepped away from Ishida, came to kneel down in front of Grimmjow, and settled down in seiza with her hands joined nervously on her lap.

"I can't fix this one, Grimmjow-san, I'm sorry. I tried and it didn't work. But I -- I can stay nearby? And as soon as it's over I'll fix it right away. Would that be alright with you?"

Ichigo felt him shudder all over again; the second Urahara shifted his weight in the background he was gripping down on Ichigo's arm once again, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring.

"He's gonna fight you," Ichigo acknowledged tiredly to Urahara.

Ichigo didn't know if it was the science gleam in Urahara's eyes that was the problem or the instinctive awareness that he'd gotten drained good and proper already and had very little left to take. Maybe he had a needle phobia. _Ichigo's dad _had a needle phobia, and he was a doctor; who knew.

"Let's hold him down," Ishida proposed, though he made no move to get closer. Chad gave him a chiding look over his shoulder; Ishida huffed his annoyance. "Or we could just cut him and sponge it up! There's really no need to baby him like this."

"I _would _prefer not to expose my samples to the air," Urahara interjected genially. "Inoue-san, Kurosaki-san, move back a little, please. Bakudō number eleven--"

Grimmjow exploded into movement, hand shooting out to catch Inoue by the collar, and tried to haul himself out of Ichigo's grasp with it. Ichigo slammed him back against the wall; Inoue came with, yelping. Ichigo rolled up onto his knees and grabbed at his wrists, trying to pry his hand out of Inoue's shirt without tearing it. Cotton stretched, baring _so much cleavage _\-- oh god, bra.

"You _asshole_\--"

"Ack!"

"Let her go!"

"It was just a sleeping kidō," Urahara said over the chaos. "Do you think I should use it on the lot of them while they're so conveniently tangled up?" he mused at Chad and Ishida.

"I will _murder you with your own hat_," Ichigo snarled over his shoulder, and then Chad leaned over the melee and delicately plucked Grimmjow's hand out of Inoue's now-gaping shirt.

Grimmjow immediately transferred his grip to the crisscrossing straps under Ichigo's kimono top.

Ichigo realized two things -- one, it hadn't been an attack, but an attempt to use them as human shields; and two, he was pretty much sharing the guy's lap with Inoue. Ichigo had forced a knee between them across Grimmjow's hips to pry them apart, but Inoue had ended up kind of straddling the guy's thigh and toppled against his chest with the suddenness of it. Now she had her two small hands pressed to Grimmjow's heaving chest as she tried to push herself back up.

Her shirt still gaped borderline enough to let her breasts escape. Blushing hot, Ichigo turned his face away as he secured his grip on Grimmjow's arms.

Then Inoue -- who had just gotten almost choked by the guy, _again_ \-- wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a hug.

Ichigo froze. Grimmjow shuddered.

"Grimmjow-san, _please _calm down." Her voice was shaking a little. Ichigo's stomach twisted. It wasn't embarrassment, it was fear. "We're not going to let anything happen. It's okay."

She ran her thin fingers through tangled blue hair. Ichigo stared at them, struck dumb.

"It's okay. It's _fine_. You're fine. We're here."

Grimmjow pulled lightly at his arm; Ichigo's grip loosened without thought. He said nothing as the Espada wrapped both arms around Inoue, burrowed into her neck. All Ichigo could see of his face was the jagged line of teeth of his hollow mask, gritted together tight.

Moving to sit back beside Grimmjow against the wall, he held out his hand silently toward Urahara; took the syringe and the cotton ball without looking. He waited a minute before unwrapping one of the man's arms and cleaning the crook of his elbow. There was no resistance.

"He pass out again?" Chad asked Inoue quietly; she shook her head no.

"You said he had a grip like a vice," Ishida reminded, moving slowly around the table for a better vantage point from which to snipe, if needed. Ichigo didn't look up at him.

"Turns out right now Yuzu could arm-wrestle him and win," he said, head bowed over dark, obvious veins. The strap around his biceps was still on, restraining blood flow. Ichigo should probably hurry.

He'd been taught by his dad; he wasn't great at making it painless and smooth but he could aim, at least, and not shoot any air bubbles into places they shouldn't be. He blocked Grimmjow's arm against his flank and inserted the needle.

A twitch; but that was all. He could hear two breaths in his ear, Grimmjow's raspy, too-fast and Inoue's... quieter, but... Fast, too, nervous and shallow.

The tube was full; he pulled the needle free, passed the syringe out without looking at who took it, pressed another cotton ball Chad was handing him on the barely-there wound, and unhooked the strap.

"There," he said, looking down at his lap, at Grimmjow's sword-rough hand on it, turned palm up and squeezing and releasing its fist. "All done."

He wanted to stand up and leave and pretend he'd never seen Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez like this, salve both their prides. He wanted not to leave Inoue alone with someone who'd roughed her up, scared her, treated her like shit. He wanted to pat his shoulder and tell him it'd be okay, Ichigo would defend him as long as he couldn't defend himself, he wanted to ask her what the hell she was thinking, comforting someone who still quietly terrified her, tell her to take better care of herself, tell her how much he admired that gentle care in her and how frustrated it made him feel. He wanted... Ugh.

"Our tea's probably cold," Chad said quietly, and rested his hand on Ichigo's shoulder. "But let's go back anyway. Urahara-san probably wants his lab back."

"What a considerate young man. Yes, please, and take him along. It shouldn't be too long."

Sighing, Ichigo dragged himself to his feet, and tried not to be too weird about getting the softest of his friends off a hollow's lap.

\--

"Well! Let it be said that I had never even considered there would be a _lethal _dose of oxytocin, but our guest here seems to be meandering toward it."

Orihime liked the tea room so much better than Urahara-san's lab. Tatami mats on the floor and old-fashioned paper doors, little sitting cushions everywhere, a nice warm light. Lived in.

It wasn't endless, featureless white stone either, or shadowed white sands. She carded her fingers through the thick hair of the man half-asleep on her lap, to keep him from tensing up at Urahara-san's voice.

"Oxy--" Ishida-kun choked a little. "That's. Alright, we should have expected that, but..."

Sado-kun hummed questioningly over his new tea cup, held in both hands to take in the warmth.

"It's a _bonding _hormone," Ishida-kun said with a trace of disbelief. "It's how the brain makes new mothers get attached to their newborns."

Urahara-san nodded. "And people to their friends, and to their lovers, and to their in-groups, etcetera. I would say at this dose it's a wonder he even reacted negatively to me, I would not have been surprised if he had been agreeable and welcoming as I came at him with a chainsaw."

"He's a hostile bastard in general is why," Kurosaki-kun muttered, but he didn't look at anyone as he said it. Orihime winced a little. She didn't know what he'd been thinking about for the last hour but at this point nobody could call it anything but brooding.

"Also I suspect we must thank his being a hollow and therefore unable to perpetuate life both physically and spiritually, because otherwise he would be lactating. The wonders of hormones!"

Kurosaki-kun sputtered. "--Oh my _god_, Hat'n'clogs, what the hell did you need to tell us that for?!" He sneaked Grimmjow-san's chest a mildly horrified look, turned away grimacing. Orihime ducked her head so Kurosaki-kun would not see her smile and think she was laughing at him. She _was_, but that was no reason. He always made such awesome faces though.

"There's more, but everything swimming in his bloodstream right now seems to be fabricated in-house, so to say. It's not foreign, his body has been induced to produce it -- by some mystery thing that may or may not be _still _in his system. And so far I have no idea what's inhibiting his reiryoku recovery either. As a hollow he should be especially well-suited to gathering reishi from the atmosphere even if he's not accumulating what he's producing."

There was a moment of silence as everyone considered Urahara-san's words.

"... Is he going to starve?" Orihime couldn't help petting the head on her lap again. "If -- isn't that how the more evolved hollows feed?"

"He wouldn't gain much from the Living World either way," Urahara-san pointed out. "Reishi is much less abundant here."

Kurosaki-kun scowled. "We can't just drop him home, though. He'd get munched in five minutes flat."

A brief moment of silence, and then Urahara-san tilted his hat up so he could meet Kurosaki-kun's eyes straight on.

"Why would that be bad?"

Orihime flinched.

"Right now, he's acting like a lap cat in a cold room. That's the hormones. May I point out that when he's in his right mind he also impales people through the chest with his bare hands, as Kuchiki-san could remind you."

Kurosaki-kun flinched at the reminder, a hand rising to touch the pit of his stomach.

"He did that to the other number six, too," Orihime whispered.

The face of the man on her lap was lax; thick eyelashes on high cheekbones and relaxed eyebrows, lips barely parted. She remembered mad laughter, teeth bared, blood coating his hand up to the middle of his forearm like a thick wet glove.

He'd looked quieter when waiting for Kurosaki-kun to heal up, but not any less intense; coiled, waiting, but still ready to spring.

It was almost impossible to reconcile the two men, then and now; it would have been easier for Orihime to pretend that this was his twin, the good one who just wanted to be touched gently. She couldn't let herself fall into that trap, though.

This man was asking for compassion. He could have it. Helpless and victimised, scared, completely lost. She couldn't turn her back on that. But once he felt better...

She didn't know.

"I repeat, Kurosaki-san. I understand you do not want people to die pointlessly. But why is this man in particular your responsibility?"

The burning look Kurosaki-kun shot him scared Orihime a little. A flash of true anger, mouth opening to snarl something back --

He forced himself back, clenched his jaw, turned away from Urahara-san. His eyes fell on Orihime and Grimmjow; he stared at him for a long moment, eyes tight in seething anger.

"Why him, Kurosaki-san."

"Why _not _him?! In the end they were all people. They wanted things. They had _feelings_. It was fucking stupid that so many of them had to die. Yammy was a murderous bully and Szayel was insane, yeah. Harribel trusted Aizen, she wanted to protect her friends. Ulquiorra wanted to understand his own feelings. Starrk didn't even want to fight at all, everyone forced him, on both sides. Grimmjow--"

He choked. Orihime blinked back wetness. Her hands were fists over Grimmjow's shoulder.

"I still have nightmares about Ulquiorra sometimes," she said quietly. "I still -- can't. But if it was him instead, I would... I couldn't leave him alone to die either."

If it... were Ulquiorra. If he hadn't dissolved into dust, into mist, reaching out for her and looking like he finally -- like. God, he had terrified her from the very start and every day until his death, implacable and inhuman, but there are the end...

Had he been scared? Had he realized right there as he died that he didn't _want _to die, that he wanted to live, that he _was alive_, that--

"I agree with Kurosaki-kun, Urahara-san. They're still people. Grimmjow-san is easily violent, but he's not... not _uncontrolled _about it. And he wants to be fair. I healed him, so he helped me, even if it wasn't -- wasn't any way I would have wanted him to, in his mind that was still about being fair. He took me to heal Kurosaki-kun so they could fight fairly. He didn't want to just hurt him because he could."

Urahara-san hummed thoughtfully, arms crossed inside his wide sleeves. She couldn't see his eyes. At his side Ururu-chan sat seiza and watched everyone with big wary eyes, head a little bowed.

"If it were Szayelaporro," Ishida-kun said dryly into the tense silence, "I would finish him off, but that's because he had demonstrated nothing but sadism and perversion. He really had no awareness of other living beings as people and not toys. But we did meet other arrancar who were... Honorable." A sigh. "Point made, Kurosaki."

Sado-kun nodded, grunting his agreement. "Orange afro was cool. Fair play."

"Yeah," Kurosaki-kun said, weary now. "And that guy who looked like a bullfighter with the pointy moustache. And _Nel and her brothers_. Like. Fuck. They're _people_, Urahara. I don't care that they used to eat people before they evolved a conscience back, I care if they're still doing it now they can choose not to."

"Is he?"

"...I don't know. Guess we'll find out."

Orihime looked down at the man on her lap as the room fell into a brooding silence. The side with his mask fragment faced up, savage and inhuman; the face behind that was still relaxed. She carded her fingers through thick blue hair, head bowed. It was getting easier and more natural to do that when every touch was greeted with a quiet exhale of breath like relief, when he sought her hand every time she took it back.

"Do you still eat people?" she whispered to him, more musing to herself than anything else. She didn't even mean for her friends to hear her but the room was quiet; of course they did.

So did Grimmjow, blue eye cracking open in a squint against the weak ceiling light.

"... S'you mean, 'still'."

Orihime's hand froze in his hair.

\--

He hadn't really been asleep, this time. Only kind of; floating, letting voices wash over him. It was warmer in here. Nice touching. Safe.

The girl was talking to him, though. Probably better if he tried to answer.

He rolled his head back a little so he could look up at her. Her eyes were open wide, but they often were. And she was staring at him instead of paying attention to her surroundings, so probably there wasn't anything dangerous around making her make that face.

... Nice petting had stopped. He nudged her hand with his temple, eyes closing for a beat before he forced them back open.

"--Right, sorry. I... Grimmjow-san."

Her hand started moving again, but her voice had paused a beat too long. "What?" he prompted her.

"When was the last time you ate a soul? Or, or another Hollow..."

Grimmjow blinked slowly. "Lone souls 're fuckin' useless past gillian," he pointed out. "Hollows... Not since Aizen."

"Not since Aizen made you an arrancar or not since you left Aizen's service?" someone else asked, voice all pointed-sharp.

Grimmjow frowned a little. There was a table in the way and he couldn't see shit. Sounded like the prissy one who liked to keep away, but he wasn't sure. He didn't know that voice as well as the girl's or the shinigami's. Grumbling a little at having to leave his spot, he rolled onto his side -- ugh, side of the table; he pushed against it, used it as a support to sit up. Why was it so fucking hard to move? Or keep a hold on where 'up' was?

Right, yeah. Priss. ... What had the question been again? Aizen. Apart from Aizen.

Oh right. Food. "Arrancar."

He spread both forearms across the tabletop to brace; the floor was rolling under him. When he looked up they all looked... He wasn't sure. Better? Exchanging little looks, less squinched up. The girl was still sitting behind him. He wished she would move closer, but if he took an arm away to pull her into him he'd probably slide right off the table. And that would -- the shinigami hadn't been happy about... Something. It bothered Grimmjow.

He frowned at the shinigami a little, but the look he got back seemed less scowly than usual. Okay, probably alright then. Nothing to be concerned about.

"I wasn't gonna eat any of _those _assholes."

Shinigami's hand was across the table, near a cup or a mug or whatever. Grimmjow let himself slide across the tabletop, body loose and arm stretching out, and patted his wrist.

"I'll eat you, though. If I win an' you kick it."

The look that passed on Kurosaki's (right! Yeah. His name. Kurosaki.) on Kurosaki's face was... Kind of weird. Grimmjow squinted at it, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Thanks," Kurosaki said, but his voice sounded funny. "I'm hella flattered."

Grimmjow snorted, taking his hand back to plant his elbow to keep from listing to the side. "Should be," he agreed, lips quirking up at the corner. Hell but his head was heavy. He rested his cheek on his biceps, arm folded back. "Know who else I'd eat right now?"

"... No, who else?"

"Harribel. 'S about it."

Kurosaki's face changed then -- surprise. "She's alive?"

"Mm." He yawned until his jaw cracked; his bigger fangs clacked back together with a snap. "But she's no fun to fight. Just fuckin' curbstomps me 'n sighs about it... Ugh."

"Wow, _that's_ too bad."

Grimmjow's eyes kept closing. He gave up opening them again for a minute. "Prolly not gonna kill her myself even when I catch up; she fights too... too. Not fun. It ain't a fuckin' _funeral_, woman."

"Except in how it kind of _could_ be."

Grimmjow snorted out a laugh. "Heh! Heheh. Yeah. But she's pretty cool, so... Would be a waste not to."

A moment of silence. Grimmjow contemplated falling back asleep on the table. The surface was too hard to be comfortable but he was kind of settled now and probably wasn't going to slide off.

"Not to ... fight her?"

"Not to _eat _her." Grimmjow cracked his eyes open again to blink quizzically. "She's the fucking top of Hueco Mundo right now. You gotta respect that. I mean, Nelliel's stronger 'n me too but she pisses me off so much even when she's not tiny, fuck if I'm taking her in. She can damn well dissipate. Or her fracción can have her, if they're not too slow."

He made himself comfortable on the table, or tried to. The edge dug into his lower ribs.

"_Oh_," the girl said in a strangely shivery, _way_ too stunned voice. "You want to eat Kurosaki-kun after he dies so you can _keep_ him." Which, honestly, was so fucking stupid it made him lift his head again, despite how much he really didn't want to.

"Why the fuck else?" he asked in the middle of two or three gasping bullshit interruptions, staring at her in bafflement. She had a dainty little hand across her mouth and was staring right back. "Ain't like I can still starve to death." A slow, thoughtful blink. "Or regress to gillian. Think I'd still prefer starving to death."

"Wait, wait, what the _fuck_. _Keep _me? What?"

"Keep your _soul_, Kurosaki-san," the guy with the hat at the opposite end of the room said all slow and unctuous; reminded him of Aizen pretending he didn't think everyone around him was a pitiful moron. Which... Kurosaki and the girl and the big one seemed to like him alright, but... Hrrm. "Rather than allow it to go through the cycle of reincarnation and rebirth."

"He'd forget _everything_," Grimmjow retorted, lip curling up, as he glared him down. "I'd have to hunt his ass down an' sharpen him all over again and he'd have none of the half-hollow fuckery he does now. Take even longer."

"Aaah. Whereas, if he's a dead, _dormant_ soul in your keeping, he can... slumber on uselessly...?"

Well. Said like that it sounded a bit like... Not _quite _sound reasoning.

"He can reincarnate when I do," Grimmjow grumbled in disgust. "Along with the _fucking rest of them_."

"Oh my god," Kurosaki mumbled, and Priss of all people patted his shoulder for some reason.

"Well, that was very serial killer romantic," Priss said dryly. Grimmjow absently felt for something on the table to throw, ended up chucking a coaster. It hit the big guy instead, right in the middle of his chest.

"... My bad. Throw it at the priss."

"_Hey_," the priss protested prissily. Big guy blinked slowly and obligingly lobbed it overhand at Priss, who batted it away with a scowl.

Grimmjow flashed the big guy a quick grin. He could tell he'd been humored, but he'd been kind of joking in the first place, so. "Good 'nuff."

The edge of the table was too hard after all. With a quiet grunt of effort, he pushed himself back up -- fuck, he was gonna go over if...

... If the woman didn't put her little hands on his shoulder blades to brace him, but he had kind of known she would do that. Like, of _course_ she would do that. She would just -- it was her whole _thing_.

Turning at the waist, he let himself topple sideways into her. He brought her down with him but hey, the floor mats were soft enough. She squeaked when he threw an arm around her and rested his cheek on her shoulder, but she was always making prey-noises anyways. He knew she could square off if she tried; it was just funny by now.

Fuck but she was comfy, though. Small and squishy except where she was ample and squishy, and her skin was stupidly soft. He nuzzled it a bit, lips parted.

"_\--Fucking murder him in the face!_"

"--Grimmjow-san that's my _breasts--_"

... Yeah, of course it was her breasts, great job on knowing her own anatomy. He wanted to ask why that was even worth bringing up, but he was sure it was going to be stupid. He patted blindly at her face, grunting vaguely. "Shh. Sleep now. Tired."

Oh hey. Hair. It was some silky shit, huh. He dug his fingers into it to give her a scritch. It was a thing they did, wasn't it?

His hand fell off onto the mats maybe two seconds later, but it didn't slow his descent into sleep any.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so I'm STILL stuck on chapter 4. I progressed a little and then got stuck again. This is the last complete chapter I was sitting on and I have zero idea when/if I'll manage to unblock it. Fair warning.

He woke belly up but warm, something thick and enveloping putting a little pressure on him. Not quite enough to feel okay with his guts exposed, to feel defended enough. Some kind of... Blanket. Thing. Fluffy.

Underneath was more of the same, firm cloth but comfortable, not quite like the bed he'd been issued in Las Noches but definitely not sand or rock. Hm. He cracked his eyes open to look at the ceiling -- a weird stain in a corner, a spiderweb. The walls...

He was alone.

He was on a mattressy-looking thing and another similar one was folded away in the corner and the room was otherwise utterly empty. 

He was... he was alone. There had been. Someone. There had been and they were gone (dead?) and he. 

Fuck. Fuck. Okay. 

He'd been alone before. He knew he'd been. He'd walked the sands alone for ages and (it was never as good as when Shawlong and the rest walked with him and) he'd been fine then. He'd survived. He'd been alone in Las Noches after they left him (not alone but worse than, surrounded by other predators waiting for him to weaken and), he'd been fine then too until he... Found Kurosaki...? 

He'd found Kurosaki and then. Then? (Pain. Rage. Pain.)

Things hadn't been good, but they'd ended... Grimmjow hadn't... Been happy. It hadn't ended right at _all_, he knew. But it hadn't been Kurosaki's fault. And then Grimmjow was alone again, until he... his friend? Until he left his friend (--_look at that, just like a declawed_\--) and they found him once again...

Kurosaki didn't leave people alone. He didn't. 

Grimmjow sat up on arms that shook, staring at the rolled-up mattress. It had been Kurosaki on it, he was almost sure. He thought -- they'd said, the woman had said she would be back and he had let her go because Priss had gone with her, which was okay, he was strong too, together they'd be okay. Not as strong as Grimmjow or Kurosaki, but. Strong enough.

But Kurosaki had stayed, and now _he wasn't here_.

Maybe the big guy...? Maybe he was with him. 

Grimmjow felt like he should have been able to tell. Where they were, who with, if they were injured. He felt blind and muffled-dumb, head full of cotton -- like the walls of the room were the limits of the world and there was nothing behind them. Anything could be happening and he wouldn't know.

It was cold outside of the blanket-thing. He shuffled to the wall and pushed himself up -- cold, way too fucking cold, he didn't like this but _where were they_. They weren't -- he didn't know this place and there had been that, that _Aizen-feeling_ man yesterday, saying unctuous cutting things and. Fuck but his knees were shit. He was not happy with them. He wobbled and his hand went right through a paper square; he faceplanted on the wooden trellis of the door and then had to spend too many seconds staring like a dumbass before he figured out it wasn't gonna swing open. There was no handle anywhere in the room to hint at any other door.

There was a corridor or another room just behind, though -- he could see it through the hole in the paper. And the wood seemed weak.

He was weak, too -- but he was still heavy. His hand couldn't close tight enough to crack anything but he _could _let himself drop onto his shoulder. When the wood splintered like ribs under a good kick he felt very satisfied.

Then of course he kind of fell halfway through the hole like a moron. Which fucking hurt when all the broken slats had to hold his weight around the ribs. Ow. 

Enough wriggling around and he was falling through on the other side, still wearing a couple paper squares. He climbed back to his feet.

Stumbled back down. Fuck. So dizzy.

"--that noise?"

Hearing Kurosaki's voice was a relief so intense he shuddered, all his muscles going loose at once, almost sending him face down to the ground.

"Ooh, no... _not _going there."

"But--"

... Kurosaki's voice had come closer, and then despite protests had been pulled away. 

... No. No, _fuck_ that. Gritting all his teeth, Grimmjow forced himself up again. His fingertips hurt from pressing against the wall and he _missed his claws_ but he needed to be up.

If someone was stopping his people from coming to him he was going to take them apart.

"No -- no, hey, stop!"

He burst into the room at the end of the corridor -- a low table. Little cushions. 

Some redheaded midget holding Kurosaki on the floor. The Aizen-feeling guy watching with disdainful amusement.

Kurosaki would never want to hurt anything that looked like a child -- there were so _many _hollows that looked like children -- lures, ambush predators, stalking goats for others --

He stepped (stumbled) forward, grabbed the redhead's shoulder. Tried to pull him off and it was like moving a wall (too strong for a human child) but the midget startled under his hand and turned around -- Grimmjow lost his balance, decided _fuck it_, went with it. Fell on him, elbows first.

"Yeowgh!"

The midget kicked free, crab-walked backwards, leaving Grimmjow to catch himself on hands and knees across Kurosaki. Baring his teeth in a satisfied snarl, he slid onto his hip into a somewhat-sitting position. "That's fucking _mine_, bitch."

Aizen Lite was staring at him with a kind of stillness that made alarm bells ring through Grimmjow's too-slow mind. Grimmjow sneered at him too. 

"... Holy shit," Kurosaki said in a very strange voice.

Grimmjow didn't want to break eye contact. That could get you killed. He felt around for Kurosaki's collar, tugged a bit. Why wasn't he sitting up --

He glanced down despite himself and.

No. What?

That wasn't.

The eyes were wrong. The tilt of the mouth -- it was the right mouth but it pinched wrong. It was the right eyebrows but they didn't bunch up how they should. A creeping horror crawled up Grimmjow's spine, coiled all through his guts. 

Something was wearing Kurosaki's face. 

"Um. Hi?"

His first instinct was to kill it, but his body was too slow, and then he thought, what if possession. Happened. Maybe Kurosaki was still in there. He couldn't just -- was this an experiment? So very Aizen-like. Mess with things, see what happens. Mess with Kurosaki. 

No. No. He stared down at the thing, trying to reason out a plan. His brain was full of fog and bullshit -- how the body thief looked scared, smaller than Kurosaki ever did, how Grimmjow _couldn't feel _Kurosaki or the big guy or the woman or the priss and wanted to do nothing but howl -- empty, desolate, alone again and again and _again _\--

"Umm. Ichigo? Your gay lover misses you!"

A beat of silence, and then Kurosaki's voice, again, from farther away -- "Actually, Inoue, disregard that. I'll call you back."

The tone was right. He still braced when he looked up at the other door.

Shinigami robes. Knitted eyebrows. A look of irritated despair and exhaustion.

Kurosaki lowered the cell phone at his ear, lobbed it without looking at the Aizen-feeling fucker. "Pretty sure Kon would prefer if you could climb off him, Grimmjow. You don't have enough breasts for him."

Grimmjow felt in freefall, dizzy with relief and incomprehension. 

"I don't know about that," Aizen Lite said lightly, "Kuchiki-san is less endowed in the pectoral area and it never seemed to deter him."

Fake Kurosaki made a face and slithered free in a hurry, started yapping about... things. He didn't listen. He could only stare up at Kurosaki and wait for his whirling thoughts to slow down enough for him to chain them up into a logical progression that would mean he understood shit. Because. What.

"Why's he look like he stole your still-warm corpse."

Kurosaki pursed his lips. "He's keeping it warm for me. I'd like for my body not to fall into organ failure and die while I'm not in it."

"I've got permission!" the fake shouted from his hiding place behind Redhead Midget and Aizen Lite. "I only stole it once! And borrowed it for joyrides a couple times but I always give it back with a full tank and no scratches. Mostly."

"If we don't count the time I had a handprint on my cheek for a week because you flirted like an asshole with some college girl," Kurosaki said, rolling his eyes in despair, and walked around the table to get to Grimmjow. 

The second he was in range Grimmjow couldn't stop his hand from shooting forward and catching a grip in his hakama. He kept staring at it even when Kurosaki stopped -- knuckles white, shaking. Well, fuck.

"... Where's the big guy," he made himself ask. Because Grimmjow had thought they would be together at least but he didn't seem to be coming.

"Chad?" Confusion. Grimmjow couldn't make himself look up at his face, guts knotted with things squirming white-hot. "He went home yesterday evening. He'll probably be back this afternoon."

"Oh," Grimmjow made himself say. "Okay."

It wasn't okay. He was stranded in enemy territory and Kurosaki had wandered off and might wander again -- he had come back, but. 

"Whoa," the midget said from farther away down the corridor. "The door is _smashed_. I thought you said he was a limp noodle!"

"A whole limp beef carcass, more like," Fake Kurosaki said, still peering around Aizen Lite. "I thought he was gonna flatten me right through the floor. Seriously, Ichigo, your boyfriend is way too forward. Like, not even some hand-holding first?"

"Oh, fuck off, Kon."

Kurosaki crouched. Grimmjow still couldn't look. He felt-- he felt. Strange. Bad. He couldn't make his hand let go.

"Where the fuck did you go," he rasped out.

A brief moment of silence. Kurosaki still balanced on the balls of his feet before him, not touching. "Inoue called, so I stepped outside. Didn't wanna wake you up, but it looks like you woke up anyway."

"She good?" Grimmjow asked, eyes flicking up, brows knitting. "Do we need to get her?"

An odd beat of silence. "She's good. Actually, you know what, let's call her back. You can talk with her if you want to...?"

Grimmjow nodded dumbly. Kurosaki stood, looked toward Aizen Lite and the phone. Paused.

"... You gotta let me go first."

"--Oh."

Grimmjow couldn't. His fingers were bloodless-white on the black cloth and he couldn't make them loosen, they wouldn't. 

Kurosaki crouched again, sighing. Looked at him. Grimmjow's eyes stayed fixed stubbornly on his hand. 

"Yeah, okay. Jinta, can you get me the--"

"I don't _think _so, Kurosaki-san," Aizen Lite said. "Jinta is going to stay in the corridor like a good boy and not wander even close to arm's reach again."

He lobbed the phone back. Kurosaki caught it.

"Uh -- what?"

"Our dear Espada-san may be no danger to Jinta or Ururu as he is right now, but the fact of the matter is that _he still tried_."

A brief moment of silence, cut by the redhead boy's mutterings about not being scared and Fake Kurosaki's mouth opening like more bullshit was gonna come out. Grimmjow gave the hakama a tug. 

"_Phone_," he reminded, interrupting a staring contest he wanted no part of. "Give it to me."

"Uh. Yeah. Wait a sec, I'll dial... Inoue? Blue bastard wants to talk to you, do you mind -- okay, good, thanks. No, he's been fine--"

"He crashed his way through a door, assaulted a child with violence aforethought, and molested me," Fake Kurosaki sang out.

"--Kon!"

"And now he's trying to take Ichigo's pants off -- oof."

Grimmjow stared at the phone Kurosaki had shoved into his hand as Kurosaki went after his corpse-wearer and administered some punishment. It was a small fold-up thing in lavender. He could hear the girl's tinny voice coming from it.

"_\--mmjow-san? Hello?_"

"...Yeah. Hey."

He had no words left for her. He wanted her small hands and her warmth, the way she melted against every bone and angle he had. He wanted her shields and her little smiles and he wanted her right here where he could make sure she was fine and no one was harassing her and he didn't need to murder anyone over it. 

He wanted to wrap himself around someone and she would let him, and Kurosaki wouldn't.

"_Umm... Please don't worry about Kon-kun. He likes to joke around. Were you warm? Was the futon comfortable enough?_"

"Was okay," he replied, wedging himself in the corner and drawing his knees close. "I slept fine." He closed his eyes and tilted his head against the wall. "You?"

She laughed a little in his ear, gentle and safe. "_Don't tell anyone! It was a little odd being alone again. I wish we could have kept camping out for the full week._"

"... Yeah," Grimmjow said into the phone very quietly. His throat was tight. "Yeah."

"_It... It helped to put on some music. Oh! Do you have any favorite songs? I don't know if you got the radio back home, at the moment there's this old band I really like..._"

\--

"His reiatsu got worse from last night, did you notice."

Ichigo hadn't. He'd also thought they were having a pointed discussion about the potential danger to Jinta and Ururu and the wisdom of strapping the hollow down until he was ready to be out of everyone's hair. But Urahara liked to swerve discussions out of nowhere to keep people on their toes.

Didn't mean he wasn't right. (Which honestly was one of the most annoying things about Urahara Kisuke.) 

"I..." Ichigo concentrated, frowning. Grimmjow was still huddled in his corner listening to Inoue's stories, looking like some kind of sad orphan, and his presence was so weak...

Ichigo had spent the night with Grimmjow wrapped around his arm, though -- he'd barred him from crossing into Ichigo's futon by the simple expedient of tucking the edge of his comforter under him but the jerk had still been unable to let Ichigo goddamn sleep unless he was touching skin in some way. Ichigo had gotten kind of... attuned.

"He was stronger when I woke up, a bit," he said, almost sure. "Now it's gone and petered out again. What's going on?"

Urahara shrugged, hat low on his face and humming disinterestedly at his tea cup, like he was actually annoyed enough to stop caring about the mystery. "Could be circadian rhythms. Could be he just leaks unless the external reishi density is higher than his own internal level."

"Everyone in this stupid house leaks reiryoku all over the goddamn place," Ichigo retorted, baffled.

"But we don't cuddle him!" Urahara countered, and Kon tittered like an idiot. "Also the protective wards are designed to tap into ambient reishi to reinforce themselves. So if that's the problem he's not going to get better in here."

"...Oh, hell." 

"But mostly I do not want in my house unrestrained someone who puts his hands on innocent children. Which granted is only Ururu at this point but--"

"Hey!" Jinta protested from the doorway.

Ichigo sank onto one of the sitting cushions, started massaging his temples. He was mildly sure that hollows didn't really have any special non-combatant categories for children -- did they even have children? As anything but snacks? -- and he was also really, embarrassingly sure Grimmjow had thought he was helping.

That didn't matter. At the moment Grimmjow wasn't with it enough for anyone to explain to him that smaller and-or weaker meant _leave it alone or else_, so they couldn't trust him.

"I've got Yuzu and Karin at home," he groaned, fingers digging into his hair. 

"And me!" Kon pointed out, looking insulted. "You've got _me _at home! To protect from lustful blue hollows and seriously, Ichigo, what the _shit_. I thought you liked In--mmmph."

Ichigo glared at Kon. Kon glared back over the hand across his face and then licked his palm.

Maybe thirty seconds later he felt staring eyes on him and looked up from the pretzel he had his own body twisted into (seriously, _bendy_. Nice. He was kind of proud.) to find Grimmjow watching them, still huddled with the phone.

"_\--going on?_"

"Kurosaki's making out with his body snatcher."

Ichigo spluttered. Kon tried to splutter, and choked. "He's _murdering _me!" he wheezed out. 

Grimmjow gave a mild blink. "He's murderin' you pretty gently."

Ichigo choked a little, told himself sternly not to laugh. Kon yelled in offense. "Don't make Inoue-san believe I'm into guys! Especially this guy! She's the only one for me-- ow, ow, _ow _Ichigo that's your elbow, that's your own elbow--"

Growling, Ichigo slapped the back of Kon's head. Grimmjow was still watching them, but he didn't look all... All anxious like he had earlier. He looked placid, maybe a little amused. 

He met Ichigo's eyes and even flicked him a quick smile. His head was tilted into the phone, still listening in.

"Inoue-san!" Kon wailed. "Please rescue me! Let me live at your house! Ichigo's abusing me--"

"Do you want him to live at your house?" Grimmjow actually asked Inoue. Ichigo hissed.

"Are you kidding me?! He's a perv--"

"Maybe she likes pervs and that's fine," the _fucking traitor hollow _said, all casual and unconcerned. 

And as Ichigo bristled, unable to find words blistering enough to express the sheer strength of his _no_, and Kon beamed in happiness at this unexpected show of support, Grimmjow blinked mildly at Kon, and finished; "Course, if she doesn't, then I'd murder you." A pause. "Not gently."

Tinny laughter came out of the phone. 

"_It's fine, Grimmjow-san. I've got shields, you know!_"

"You're too nice 'bout 'em. Gotta give 'em more teeth."

"_... think about it..._" More talking, but too quiet for Ichigo to overhear. He tried to lean closer, then realized he was still holding Kon's elbow behind his back. Whoops.

"I'm surprised you can talk about murdering people when you're still a damn marshmallow," he muttered resentfully as he shuffled closer on his knees. "Give me the phone, I gotta talk to Inoue."

"Don't gotta be angry to kill people," Grimmjow said like that was an observation on par with 'beautiful day today innit'. "Or even be stronger. Just gotta be trickier."

He gave Kon a long, vaguely blurry look. Kon seemed to miss the drugged film over his usual intensity and swallowed nervously. Grimmjow gave a slow blink and looked back at Ichigo, smiling with just one corner of his mouth.

"But he's yours, so I'm not going to."

Ichigo didn't know if he ought to feel grateful or disturbed. He took the phone Grimmjow handed him and sat right there on the floor, almost in arm's reach. Behind him Kon muttered things about not... _really _... being Ichigo's... even though they'd actually for real bought him with money... and this was kind of slave-ish and exploitative... maybe even a little kinky, gasp, oh no...

"Inoue, it's me again. Um. Yeah, so Grimmjow apparently went after Jinta a little? So now Urahara wants him to stay elsewhere."

"_\--Oh. Is Jinta-kun--_" 

"He's fine, he's fine." He turned to give Grimmjow his shoulder, lowered his voice like that would mean the man wouldn't hear him. "He thought Jinta was hurting Kon? Which he probably was, but who cares--"

"Hey!"

"_Anyway_, I'm gonna ask Chad if he minds if we crash at his place for a bit."

Ichigo hadn't noticed Grimmjow was tensing up until he went all loose again and slumped against the wall. Ichigo turned his head, blinked. To be honest, he was a little surprised he'd been close-ish for more than thirty seconds and didn't yet have an arrancar-shaped tumor attached to his side. "Uh--" 

"_You could come to mine? It's a little closer to Urahara-san's..._"

Ichigo frowned at the thought. "Inoue, it's one block's difference, I don't think that matters much at this point. We're not invading your home."

"_I wouldn't mind_," she said quietly. "_When Matsumoto-san and the rest stayed over it was fun..._"

Ichigo's shoulders drooped. God, he felt like a heel. "Matsumoto's a girl, though, not a gropey guy," he countered gently. "And think about how it's going to look to the neighbors if several guys stay the night, you'll get in trouble with your asshole landlord again."

Inoue was just too pretty, honestly, and too young to be living alone in a shitty one-room studio. It stank of a scandal in her background. And it didn't matter how proper and polite and helpful she was on a daily basis, most neighbors loved her but there was this old biddy who had already given her so much shit for the ruffians she ran around with and they just ate it up. If Ichigo had to hear whispers about his delinquent hair and Chad's apparently yakuza-adjacent look as he went up to her apartment again he was gonna blow a gasket.

"_They would only see one of you_," she countered half-heartedly.

Yeah, great, they'd think she was hooking up with Chad. Which -- Chad was a great guy. He supposed that'd be... 

Ugh. _Uuuugh_.

"You can visit at Chad's? Listen, I gotta call him to ask. He was planning to have his morning to himself and I don't know when Urahara will want us to clear out but probably as soon as possible."

Urahara snapped his fan closed and stood. "We've got time for another examination first, since Mister Jaegerjaquez seems mostly coherent. But this time Tessai will be with us from the start."

Ichigo looked at him and his pleasantly bland face, looked at Grimmjow's sudden expressionlessness. Looked at his only support at the moment, which was Kon, who looked completely clueless and still pouting over his nonexistent bruises.

Oh boy.

"Alright, Grimmjow. You okay letting Urahara ogle you in the name of science? I'll whack him for you if he does anything more than looking."

Grimmjow opened his mouth, stared over Ichigo's shoulder -- at Urahara, no doubt -- and went utterly blank. Eyelids heavy with studied disinterest, eyebrows relaxed, mouth a neutral line.

"Sure," he said carelessly. His hands clenched and released slowly over his thighs like a cat testing its claws. 

Ichigo winced. Well, this was going to be a shit show.

At least after this they could rest up at Chad's. He was good about being soothing, and if Grimmjow freaked out again Chad could always just sit on him.

\--

"_\--too bad about your vacation, Hime. Maybe you can get together with -- wait, not Chizuru. No matter what, **not Chizuru**. And Ryō has track training camp all week, but Michiru and Mahana should be around._"

"Yes, Tatsuki-chan," Orihime agreed easily. "Maybe I'll call them and ask what they're doing. We could... go to the mall."

It'd be less otherworldly and important than going to another dimension of white sands and moonlight with her... She didn't know what to name what Kurosaki-kun and the rest were to her. Teammates seemed so impersonal. Partners was so vague with possible meanings. The group of people she did secret and important things with...

Her accomplices? Hehehe.

"_And maybe you won't_," Tatsuki-chan said dryly into the phone. Orihime stuck out her tongue. 

"Probably not," she acknowledged. "I'm sorry, I'm not in the right headspace to meet them, I think. Maybe on Saturday."

She still planned to visit Sado-kun this afternoon. To make sure they were all settling in all right. Maybe she could bring cookies... 

Her doorbell rang. Blinking, she felt out without thought -- _oh_.

"Sorry, Tatsuki-chan! I've got guests! I've got to go!"

"_Ichigo, huh_," Tatsuki-chan drawled knowingly. Orihime flushed. "_Fine, fine, I gotta go back to training anyway. Think my stomach has settled_," she added with some satisfaction. 

Of course Tatsuki-chan would be happy to be worked so hard she threw up. Heh. "Talk to you later, Tatsuki-chan, have fun at camp," Orihime said, and ended the call. 

Then she flung her front door open. 

"Kuro-- Sado-kun!" She peered quickly past Sado-kun's waist to check the corridor outside. No one else was peeking out. "Come in, come in!"

Sado-kun walked in, plastic bags swinging from his hands; and so did Kurosaki-kun's spirit form, with the arrancar riding him piggyback, eyes half-closed. Kurosaki-kun had taken off the top layer of his kimono and draped it on Grimmjow-san's shoulders; it looked very odd on a man she'd only ever known wearing white. Orihime closed the door behind them, and immediately whirled to look at them some more.

Grimmjow-san was completely burrowed against Kurosaki-kun's neck; between that and the collar of the kosode she could only see one closed eye and its assorted eyebrow.

"Uuuugh. Sorry, Inoue." His cheeks looking a little flushed, Kurosaki-kun went down on one knee in a controlled descent and set Grimmjow-san down against the wall underneath her window -- then he had to convince him to unlock his arms from around his neck. "C'mon, Grimmjow, let me breathe. Damn but he weighs tons."

"Sorry," Sado-kun said as he set down his bags. "I'd carry him, but..."

"You would look like you're giving piggyback rides to ghosts, _which..._ Anyways."

"What's going on?" Orihime asked. Grimmjow-san was blinking dazedly around, head rolling back onto his shoulders to watch the ceiling. He was starting to list to the side as well -- and the kosode was a bit too narrow for his shoulders and had slipped down one arm. "Um, should I get a futon? Is there time, or--"

"Yeah, probably." Kurosaki-kun sighed. "I'm really sorry, Inoue. It's just, Chad's..."

"While I was gone," Sado-kun said, and gave a weary sigh as he sank onto a sitting cushion she had by her little table, "the landlord made repairs."

Uh oh. "... Did he... repair your apartment...? Without your permission?"

"He did _something _to his apartment alright," Kurosaki-kun grumbled.

Sado-kun's shoulders sagged. Sighing, he rubbed at his face with the heel of his hand. "He tried to fix the pipes for the whole building on his own. It... did not work out."

Wincing sympathetically, Orihime hustled to the closet where she kept her futons, pulled the top one out. She'd aired it earlier before putting it away, and she hoped it didn't smell like her sweat or anything, but Grimmjow-san was looking closer and closer to just ending up on the floor. She unfolded it vigorously and went about finding fresh sheets.

"Is your furniture okay, Sado-kun?"

"Mostly okay. But." A heavy look at Grimmjow. "There's a repairs crew getting into everything."

Aw, right. Even if they couldn't see ghosts, he was dense enough with spiritual pressure that they could probably still touch him. Kurosaki-kun and Sado-kun would have to borderline juggle him to keep him out from underfoot... 

"You can stay here," she said as she readied the futon, and tried not to sound too enthusiastic. "Oh! Should we call Ishida-kun? Maybe he'll want to sleep over too?"

Kurosaki-kun gave her a baffled blink. "He's got his own bedroom, why would he want to be crashing with three sweaty guys in a tiny room?"

There, the sheets were fitted and the comforter ready to deploy... On her knees, she pushed the whole thing closer to Grimmjow-san, wondering if he was alert enough to get on it on his own, and if they should move the folding screen to give him some privacy... "Because Ishida-kun likes spending time with us? He's always grumpy about it, but does he -- ack!"

Hand on her wrist, large and heavy like a shackle, pinning her forearm to the futon. Face two inches from her own face, feverishly intense, blue eyes too wide, mask teeth cracked open. 

"--Um. Grimmjow-san?"

He opened his mouth as if to speak and then made a frustrated noise, shook his head; blue hair fell across his eyes. 

"Inoue?"

"It's fine," she said without looking. She didn't think... She wasn't scared of him right now. A little nervous maybe, because he was an adult man and bigger than her, but the phone call had... Hm.

Kurosaki-kun hovered, standing behind her, ready to plunge in. She resolutely ignored him to grin encouragingly at Grimmjow-san. The way he pinned her forearm meant she was curled forward on her knees like a turtle, which was pretty silly (not as bad as putting her butt in the air and still having her forearm pinned down, _but_.)

"What is it, Grimmjow-san?"

He hesitated, glanced over her shoulder -- averted his eyes, from both of them. "... Cold."

He didn't let go, either, fingers just barely kneading at her.

"Lay down and I'll get the comforter on you, okay?"

His brow furrowed some more; the muscles in his jaw rolled. "... Mnh." 

Sighing through his nose in a clearly frustrated way, he let her go and let himself fall across the futon on his side. Orihime covered him up to his shoulders, then picked up the black kosode and held it out for Kurosaki-kun to put back on. It was odd to see him in a shinigami uniform that had a white top.

Not... Bad odd, though. Maybe a little half-dressed odd, and she kind of -- um. Anyway. Yes.

"Nah, put it over him, Urahara had a theory..."

"Hm?"

"That his reiryoku leaks to match the outside level -- Inoue!"

Orihime patted the kosode she had thrown open over the comforter to smooth it down, finished sitting on the mattress by Grimmjow-san's head, and looked up. "Yes?"

Kurosaki-kun was frowning. "Are you gonna -- Uh. Inoue--"

Grimmjow-san was craning his head to look up at her, too. She smiled down and patted her knee. 

The groan of relief he let out when he turned face down on the futon to press his forehead, his closed eyes against her thigh made her flush a little, and then worry. She tugged the collar of the black kosode higher up, until it touched the ends of blue hair, and cautiously rested her hand on his shoulder. 

It didn't stop being embarrassing, having a grown man she wasn't on intimate terms with using her lap as a pillow. But...

"You don't have to force yourself like that," Kurosaki-kun said, and now his eyebrows looked a little anguished. 

Grimmjow-san growled quietly, pushed an arm around her hips -- forearm pressed across her butt, hand a loose fist against her thigh on the other side. She blushed a little. Insistently possessive in intent, but the strength in that arm was so lacking... 

"I'm alright." She looked up to meet Kurosaki-kun's eyes, smiled. "I know it looked bad earlier. It, well. It brought back a lot of memories, I guess. I was pretty weak back then..."

Orihime made herself laugh. Kurosaki-kun's eyebrows rippled oddly. (She laughed a little more sincerely at that. He always had the most amazing eyebrow gestures. Did eyebrows gesture? His were like a full pantomime some days.)

Being kidnapped and manhandled by beings who were all stronger and more willing to hurt others than she was, and that she could not for the life of her _predict_, it _had _been traumatic. She would always carry the scars. But if Grimmjow woke up back to his normal self and tried to hurt her again...

Her shields were much stronger now. Tsubaki could cut deeper. More importantly -- she refused to worry Kurosaki-kun or any of her friends again. He'd been trusting her more, after that mess with the Fullbringers; they'd gone in battle against hollow incursions together with Sado-kun and Ishida-kun and they worked _great _as a team. She wasn't going to allow him to forget all that.

She was pretty sure she had enough teeth now to push Grimmjow to choose another prey.

"Anyway. What was it about Urahara-san?"

Muttering under his breath, Kurosaki-kun looked at the futon, then at the cushions by her table a few steps away -- then realized he hadn't taken off his sandals and started hopping from one foot to the next to take them off and kick them toward her door. 

"Theory. His reiryoku may be dropping to the level of the ambient reiryoku. He's got a leak, basically."

"Oh! Like thermodynamics but with powers! He's trying to warm up the entire universe."

Kurosaki-kun blinked at her. "Uh. Let's... Go with that. Anyway, the kosode is part of my spiritual body, kind of, so we wanted to see if he'd retain more for himself if he's kinda wrapped up in it. Otherwise he's gonna have to wear us as backpacks for the rest of his life, which, uh, no."

Orihime tried to picture it, and instantly started laughing. Kurosaki-kun sighed down at her, hands on his hips like a reproving housewife but his face looser, almost like a smile.

"_Pfffffff_."

"Yeeeah."

He didn't move straight away; Orihime blinked up at him. "Um, do you want to sit down -- oh! I guess I can't get the two of you anything to drink like this, I'm sorry--" 

Sado-kun snorted, stood, and dragged the coffee table up to the futon. "There. Sit down already, Ichigo."

Kurosaki-kun opened his mouth to retort something offended, then huffed and sat arms crossed and cross-legged on the floor by Grimmjow-san's hip. Sado-kun put a tea cup down in front of him, and one for Orihime too, and a third for Grimmjow-san, though he didn't fill that one.

"So. What now."

They started trying to figure that out. Orihime didn't mind them staying -- and a good thing, too, because there were very few other choices. If they absolutely had to, Kurosaki-kun said he was ready to ask the Visored still living in the human world, but he figured they would probably hate hosting an arrancar. Even now they still didn't exactly love the hollow parts of themselves.

As the three of them talked, her hand had thoughtlessly slipped through thick hair; she didn't notice until Grimmjow-san's arm tightened and he pulled himself closer. He turned his head, forehead now pressed to her stomach, cheek on her thigh; Orihime froze for a second. He was breathing on some, um, personal places.

Then she had to gently touch his shoulder, tell him no. "Grimmjow-san, your mask hurts. Do you want a pillow?"

Grimmjow-san cracked an eye open. "No."

He turned onto his other cheek, rubbed his cheekbone and the whole line of his jaw against her thigh, then settled back down. His hand curled over her knee, fingers rubbing thoughtlessly at the sensitive inside of them.

It was... It felt. A bit. Um. .. Tingly? She tried not to shiver. 

Kurosaki-kun put down his cup with a little snap. "_Jesus dick_, do you _have _to get handsy all the time?!"

Grimmjow-san tensed. 

He opened his eyes -- she wasn't sure if Kurosaki-kun could see him from this angle -- but didn't turn to look at him, just stared ahead under the table. Didn't make a move to answer, either. Orihime bit her lip. 

"... What does it feel like when you aren't touching people?"

"Like I'm a newborn bunny whose mom got munched and is never coming back," he said roughly, jaw tense. "Next fucking question."

"Ouch." She winced. "And when you're, um. This morning, when you woke up--"

He shuddered, pressed his face against her thigh and she thought he was going to hide from the question and never answer it, which hinted well enough at how bad it must have been -- then all at once he forced himself to flop onto his back and glared up at the ceiling. His hands were fists over the kosode.

"Like I'm -- like there's nothing beyond the walls. Just the room, just. Floating? Or the whole fucking _world_ went and died on me, 'cause if they're alive I should know." He stared up at her, pushing up onto an elbow, his head tilted back. "I _should_, right? I should fucking feel them, but I don't, there's _nothing_. There's -- I'm _blind_."

Wincing, Orihime raked her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead.

"And it's... bad, to be alone."

"It--"

He fell silent there, hand waving vaguely to illustrate something he didn't seem to have words for. The grimace on his face, though...

"It's..."

"... Hey, don't do that," Kurosaki-kun said, quieter, and leaned in to catch Grimmjow-san's wrist where he'd been digging his nails into his other elbow. 

Orihime watched them, their awkward faces, the wrist Kurosaki-kun didn't release. 

"Is it nice to be squeezed?"

Grimmjow-san turned his face up to her, eyes wide with sudden hunger. "Oh -- yeah. Fuck yeah."

Averting his eyes, Kurosaki-kun gave the wrist he held a squeeze. Grimmjow-san turned onto his side, curled to press his shoulder blades against Orihime's leg, arm extended toward him. She started in on a massage on his shoulder, digging her knuckles in. Grimmjow-san shuddered, made a _noise--_

"Um."

"Where are you guys squeezing him exactly?" Sado-kun asked from the other side of the table, head leaning on a hand and smiling lopsided with amusement. Orihime and Kurosaki-kun flushed all at once.

"Oh my _god_, Chad, shut up. It's your turn for lap time in five minutes."

They all blinked at the quiet, rough-edged laughter coming from the vicinity of her lap. Easy laughter, a little mocking but not meanly so.

"Mmm. Schedule me harder."

Kurosaki-kun spluttered. 

Mischief in his eyes and his smile, long and toothy, but also -- something oddly soft, amused and soft, something -- 

He craned his neck to look up at her, throw her the same pleased look, and the mess of his hair fell across the bridge of his nose and he squinted through it, wrinkled up his nose and. Oh. 

He was really, _really _pretty, wasn't he. 

She wondered what he'd look like if he wore Kurosaki-kun's shinigami uniform properly, the right size and all. Or even just a normal kimono. He seemed more... more european, in his style, or like he should be wearing one of those too-short punk high school jackets from the nineties with the sagging uniform pants. She imagined him with an actual pompadour, like Elvis, smooth and shiny with product and maybe two feet long -- banana hair -- and had to press a hand against her mouth not to laugh.

Black looked strange on him, was the thing she'd been thinking, only maybe not a bad strange, just an unusual one. She raked his bright, impossibly blue hair away from his forehead and thought how strange it was that she was already so used to petting him like that.

"Mnh... Nice, princess." The estigma were sharp, serrated slashes toward his temples, highlighting the sweep of dark eyelashes fluttering closed. It took her a second to register the nickname.

Oddly enough, it brought her back down. The normal Grimmjow had only ever called her "woman" and "girl" and "hey, you". "Princess" may still be mocking, but it was also part of her name, and that was... More than he would ever give, of his own accord.

Sighing, she looked up. Kurosaki-kun was still holding firm onto his wrist, his eyes pensive. Sado-kun watched the lot of them over his cup; she couldn't read him. 

She felt the familiar prickle of energy as Ishida-kun stepped up the stairs to her apartment level. "Ah, Sado-kun, could you...?"

"Sure."

Kurosaki-kun blinked up at them; startled when Ishida-kun knocked. "Who the hell--"

"Did you lose my invitation to the orgy?" Ishida-kun asked dryly as he peered through the open door past Sado-kun. Orihime snickered.

"Augh. _Ishida_. No."

"Did you want to be invited to the orgy?" Sado-kun asked, blinking patient brown eyes at him. Ishida-kun narrowed his eyes at him like he suspected he was being teased.

"I'm game," came from her lap, languidly amused. His hooded eyes were an entirely too adult invitation. Orihime spluttered, then laughed helplessly in her hand, eyes wide as she stared at Ishida-kun. 

"I'll... keep to just watching for now," Ishida-kun said in a funny voice, and Orihime choked again.

"You shirking again, Ishida?" Kurosaki-kun asked, his ears pink as he turned to look at him and coincidentally looked away entirely from Orihime and Grimmjow-san. "First you dodge the cuddle schedule, now you're dodging the orgy..."

He had let go of Grimmjow-san's wrist; Grimmjow's hand curled back toward his chest slowly, almost regretful on black cloth. All sinews and veins.

"You shouldn't kinkshame, Kurosaki-kun," Orihime said as innocently as she could, eyes demurely lowered. "Ishida-kun can watch if he wants."

Kurosaki-kun whipped around, stared at her googly-eyed. Orihime maintained her composure another second, and then turned scarlet and started giggling helplessly. Against her leg, Grimmjow snorted, shoulders shaking, flicked her a toothy grin. "Fuck no he can't, I ain't a free show."

"Oh, I'm sure he could contribute another way--"

"Jaegerjaquez," Ishida-kun interrupted, sitting at the coffee table. The look on his face sobered her up; he looked entirely done with shenanigans, and like he expected the rest of them to be done as well. "I see you're coherent right now. What _do _you remember?"

Grimmjow was still against her, breath stoppered. 

He lifted his head, shuffled his elbow underneath himself. His eyebrows furrowed. She knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"Remember... About what?"


End file.
